The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis didn’t have to wait long for a new auxiliary bishop. On Dec. 10, just four days following the installation in Crookston of its former auxiliary bishop, Bishop Andrew Cozzens, Pope Francis named a new auxiliary bishop: Father Joseph Williams, pastor of St. Stephen and parochial administrator of Holy Rosary in Minneapolis.

Asked to describe himself, Father Williams said, “I love the Lord, I love the Church, and I want to see the Church grow. I guess that’s what it comes down to. When I received the call of priesthood, that sense of being a fisher of men was clear right from the beginning.”

In his early 20s, Bishop-elect Williams had his heart set on becoming a doctor. His father, Dr. Gary Williams, practiced family medicine in Stillwater, and Bishop-elect Williams studied biology and chemistry at the University of Minnesota Morris, planning to follow in his father’s footsteps. But, a deep encounter with the Lord through an informal Catholic Bible study led him to step away — briefly, he thought — to pursue philosophy and pre-theology studies at Franciscan University of Steubenville in eastern Ohio. But then a priest invited him to discern the priesthood, and he realized he wasn’t called to tend to bodies, but to hearts.

Father Williams, 47, is expected to be ordained and installed as a bishop Jan. 25, 2022 — the feast of the conversion of St. Paul, patron of the archdiocese. As an auxiliary bishop, Bishop-elect Williams will assist Archbishop Bernard Hebda in leading the archdiocese.

Since 2008, Bishop-elect Williams has served as pastor of St. Stephen in south Minneapolis, a predominantly Latino parish of 500 households. Last year, he also assumed responsibility for Holy Rosary, a nearby parish of 60 households, also mostly Latino, that had previously been in the longtime care of Dominican priests.

Even as a seminarian, Bishop-elect Williams was interested in Latino ministry, and before ordination in 2002, he studied Spanish in Mexico to make it possible. While his first parish assignment as a parochial vicar of the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul led to a focus on young adult ministry — he helped to launch its Theology on Tap program, which continues today — his second assignment, at Divine Mercy in Faribault in 2004, drew heavily on those language skills and aim for cultural understanding.

In the year he was there, law enforcement conducted a drug and weapons raid that led to 69 arrests, about half of which were residents of a mobile home park where Latino immigrants lived. The incident increased distrust between the newly-arrived immigrants and police. Then-Father Williams and another parochial vicar, Father Jay Kythe, sought to heal the wounds in the community, in part by bringing Mass to the mobile home park and consecrating the land “so it becomes sacred again,” he told The Catholic Spirit in 2004. Monthly Masses continued there for a while, he said, and they visited people in their homes, intentionally inviting them to the parish and helping them return to practicing their faith.

In 2005, he became pastor of St. Mathias in Hampton and St. Mary in New Trier, rural parishes four miles apart, 33 miles northeast of Faribault. His first Mass at St. Mathias was celebrated for Bill May, a parishioner diagnosed with cancer with just a month to live. At that Mass he met May’s wife, Anita, and asked if he could visit Bill that day in their home, she recalled in a 2009 essay in The Catholic Spirit.

“Father did come to our home that evening and prayed and visited with us,” she wrote. “Over the next weeks, Father Joseph made many visits to our home and to Rochester — to visit and always to pray for Bill and for us. His very presence and prayers were a great comfort to Bill and to our entire family during those days.” Then-Father Williams celebrated Mass with the Mays at their home the day Bill died.

“He is a very caring, prayerful, fun-loving, joy-filled and holy man,” Anita Mays wrote in 2009. “His prayerfulness, his concern and sacrifice for others, his love of the Eucharist and eucharistic adoration (which he started at Hampton), his love of children and so many other qualities endeared him to so many.”

After just three years at St. Mathias and St. Mary, then-Father Williams was assigned to St. Stephen in Minneapolis, which was going through tumultuous times. His ministry over the past 13 years has focused on the neighborhood’s burgeoning Latino population. The parish’s website is primarily in Spanish. A hallmark of the parish is its street ministry, which takes an invitation to the Gospel door to door.

His ministry to Latino Catholics has also deepened his sympathies to undocumented immigrants. (In 2012, he wrote a guest commentary in The Catholic Spirit titled, “Why I changed my mind about undocumented immigrants.”) He has become an advocate for federal immigration reform and the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy.

“It comes with the territory when you’re serving Latinos,” he said. “They have come to this country in sometimes very challenging circumstances, sometimes even desperate ones. You learn right away that nobody wants to leave their homeland. If they’re here, it’s a sacrifice for them to be here.”

Latino Catholics in difficult circumstances “sense the Church is with them,” he said. “That’s part of what draws them to the Church: They feel like it’s a safe place: ‘I’m loved.’ I think this is a big part of Latino ministry that people don’t realize is their insecurity, maybe even at times an inferiority they feel among us.”

That’s why, he said, the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which is celebrated Dec. 12, is so important, he said.

“She looked on them. She looked on Juan Diego, and they’ve never forgotten that look. It’s a dignifying look,” he said. “It’s a look that has ennobled them. A big part of the Church is to see the immigrant, to see Latinos in particular, as Our Lady saw Juan Diego, with those loving eyes, with the hope that ‘I’ve got something planned for you.’”

Bishop-elect Williams has served as the archdiocese’s vicar for Latino Ministry since 2018. And now, he’s been called to a much broader leadership role.

“I wish I could say I was praying,” Bishop-elect Williams said, smiling, about the moment he got the phone call Nov. 22 from the U.S. papal nuncio, Archbishop Christophe Pierre, informing him of his appointment as a bishop. In reality, he was watching YouTube videos about mountain biking, he said, because he had plans to bike with another priest that afternoon.

“The nuncio called and said he had great news — I’m still trying to believe that, to be honest,” Bishop-elect Williams said with a laugh. “He was very gentle, very joyful.”

The way Archbishop Pierre phrased the announcement struck Bishop-elect Williams: “The Holy Father ‘has’ appointed you” — that the appointment has already happened, and it was his role to affirm the call.

Bishop-elect Williams’ first response, he said, was, “Lord, have mercy!” He thanked the nuncio and told him he would pray about it. The nuncio, however, told him to first say yes, then pray.

“That kind of turned it around from what I had expected,” he said with a laugh. “The sense that you do say ‘yes,’ you test that, you bring it to prayer and you see if there’s peace. And there was peace.

“I think anytime there’s great news, even in the Scriptures with the shepherds — ‘good news of great joy’ — there’s a temptation to fear,” he continued. “Even for Our Lady, she was disturbed by the news of the angel. It’s precisely those words of ‘be not afraid’ that she heard, and I really felt, after the call — I was before a large image of Our Lady of Guadalupe — I really heard her say that, ‘Be not afraid.’”

He then brought that to prayer in his chapel, where he reflected on Jesus’ words in the Garden of Gethsemane: “Not my will, but thy will be done.” And the peace remained.

Then he called Archbishop Hebda, he said.

“He’s so good, he’s so fatherly,” he said. “Maybe he sensed the trepidation a little bit. He just encouraged me, and he reminded me that if it got to this point, there’s a lot of people who can see this in you.”

Bishop-elect Williams comes from a wonderful family, he said, noting his parents, Dr. Gary and Mary Williams, parents of nine, celebrated their 50th anniversary this year. “They’ve loved so well,” he said.

His brother Father Peter Williams, ordained for the archdiocese two years after himself, just baptized Nos. 29 and 30 of their nieces and nephews. Of them, 28 live within a mile of his parents, he noted.

“I feel incredibly blessed to have the family that I’ve had, and it’s a big part of my priesthood,” he said. “To be honest, preaching to the Latinos, I find myself preaching about my parents, their love and what the sacrament of matrimony can be. I think it’s a blessing for them. It’s been for me.”

Archbishop Harry Flynn, who ordained Bishop-elect Williams in 2002, said something while he was in seminary that he said changed his prayer, even his life: The question isn’t, he said, “Lord, this is what I would love to do. Please bless me.” Rather, it’s “Lord, what would you have me do?”

When he decided to become a priest, especially alongside his brother, “I felt like both of us … were like Peter and Andrew on the seashore,” he said, referring to the brother Apostles. “We kind of dropped the nets together, and we’ve been walking together in this vocation. It’s been a privilege.”